DotNetFirebird - Using Firebird SQL in .NET

DotNetFirebird - Using Firebird SQL in .NET

Dan at dotnetfirebird.org just emailed me, pointing me to DotNetFirebird: Using Firebird SQL in .NET, http://www.dotnetfirebird.org

As quoted from the DotNetFirebird home page,
"Firebird SQL is a powerful open source database that can be easily used in .NET. I believe it has a big potential (it is full-featured, requires zero administration, can be embedded, etc.). However this potential has not been fully discovered by .NET developers who rely on Microsoft SQL Server heavily."

Firebird has been getting some airplay recently. And with the "dude, check out this site..." [paraphrased] email from Dan, well it's time I took a closer look.

For those of you who have a life (err, I mean... um... yeah :), Firebird is based on/derived from/a child of/etc Borland's Interbase (who I believe purchased it from someone else, bla bla bla). I'm not going to do a long history of Firebird/Interbase, but it does have a long "under the radar" history. For example, I briefly played with Interbase when it was bundled with Delphi (v1 or 2 I think... i.e. about a million tech years ago).

It "really" doesn't compare to Access (apples and oranges). It does compare, and compare well to MSDE. Where it has a good head start. SQL Express is closer to Firebird in the embedded space, but we have a while to wait for that... And of course Firebird is not only free but also open source.

Another thing I find really interesting is the work on integrating/linking/using Firebird and DotLucene. You know I've been jones'ing to play with DotLucene/OpenLucene (here and here.

On http://www.dotnetfirebird.org/ you'll find a ADO.NET provider for Firebird, links to download Firebird, code snips, and generally a bunch of information on using Firebird and .Net together.


Thanks for the cool tip Dan.